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2016 city population estimates

Started by golden eagle, May 26, 2017, 01:23:15 AM

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golden eagle

One of my favorite times of the year, as the U.S. Census Bureau released city population estimates for 2016. Here are the top ten largest cities:

New York: 8,537,643
Los Angeles: 3,977,323
Chicago: 2,704,968
Houston: 2,303,483
Phoenix: 1,615,017
Philadelphia: 1,567,872
San Antonio: 1,493,510
San Diego: 1,406,630
Dallas: 1,317,350
San Jose: 1,025,360

No surprises here, but Houston has closed a nearly 600k-person gap to just above 400k with Chicago. San Antonio is quickly approaching Philadelphia, taking a near 200k gap to around 75k. Columbus overtook Indianapolis as the nation's 14th largest city. Source

When looking at state results, there are interesting things going on. Nashville is now Tennessee's largest city at 660,338; compared to Memphis' 652,717.

Charleston is now South Carolina's biggest city, edging out Columbia by a mere 76 people! Charleston is at 134,385, while Columbia sits at 134309.

Huntsville is now Alabama's third largest city, pushing Mobile down to fourth place, with 173 people separating the two. Huntsville is just under 7000 less than Montgomery. I believe Huntsville will be Alabama's largest city within the next ten years.

For state numbers: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/popest/total-cities-and-towns.html

I haven't looked at all the numbers, but will have more time this weekend to parse through.



hotdogPi

Quote from: golden eagle on May 26, 2017, 01:23:15 AM
Charleston is now South Carolina's biggest city, edging out Columbia by a mere 76 votes! Charleston is at 134,385, while Columbia sits at 134309.

Those aren't votes.
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

golden eagle

I was looking at the Montana election while writing this. Thanks for catching that.

formulanone

Huntsville might be the second-largest city by the end of the decade, but the Birmingham Metro area is still much larger in population than the Huntsville-Decatur / North Central Alabama area.

Max Rockatansky

Detroit still is losing population, down to 672,795 from 1.8 million in the 1950s.  That's absolutely incredible to me that a city of that size really can depopulate like that when a war or natural disaster wasn't involved.  Phoenix looks on pace to hit two million maybe in 15-20 years at this rate, Houston is closing in Chicago.

Rothman

#5
Wait, was this the first time Phoenix surpassed Philadelphia?

ETA:  Yes, it was.  That's rather significant.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: Rothman on May 26, 2017, 07:59:23 AM
Wait, was this the first time Phoenix surpassed Philadelphia?

No, in the last decade there was some conjecture estimates that Phoenix was at 1.7 million but it was WAY off.  If I had to speculate, I would venture the snowbird crowd probably had something to do with that assumption that the number was so high.

inkyatari

Many people, myself included, think Chicago may become the next Detroit.

Only time will tell.
I'm never wrong, just wildly inaccurate.

Henry

I still think it's funny that the largest city in the Bay Area is not San Francisco! When was the last time it was, 1989?

As for Chicago being the next Detroit, I have to disagree on that prediction. It will still remain the largest city in the Midwest for many years, as new people come in to replace those who have moved out. Besides Detroit, other cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore and New Orleans have suffered major losses as well.
Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

Max Rockatansky

I'd argue Chicago has already bottomed out since it has dropped from 3.6 million to a slight rebound on the last census to about 2.7 million.  I'm with everyone on the Midwest Rust Belt thing but really Detroit really has dropped to a level unseen pretty much anywhere before in North America.  The whole city basically is a giant ruin, you'll never so much abandonment on that large of a scale.  Gary, Indiana is probably the next closest analog with small cities dropping from 178,000 to 76,000 from 1960.

DTComposer

Quote from: Henry on May 26, 2017, 09:34:08 AM
I still think it's funny that the largest city in the Bay Area is not San Francisco! When was the last time it was, 1989?

I believe 1988 was the first year the estimates put San Jose ahead.

Quote from: Henry on May 26, 2017, 09:34:08 AMBesides Detroit, other cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore and New Orleans have suffered major losses as well.

Detroit gets the most notoriety since it was over 1 million people and for many years was the 4th or 5th largest city in the country. But Cleveland's drop has been comparable, and St. Louis' even more so:

Detroit
1950: 1,849,568 (5th largest)
2016: 672,795 (23rd largest, 63.6% drop in population)

Cleveland
1950: 944,808 (7th largest)
2016: 385,809 (51st largest, 59.1% drop in population)

St Louis
1950: 896,796 (8th largest)
2016: 311,404 (61st largest, 65.2% drop in population)

Baltimore (35.2% drop) and New Orleans (37.6% drop) have seen significant losses, but not nearly to level of those other three (and New Orleans was certainly exacerbated by Katrina, as it has seen a 14% gain in population since 2010).

Quote from: Rothman on May 26, 2017, 07:59:23 AM
Wait, was this the first time Phoenix surpassed Philadelphia?

ETA:  Yes, it was.  That's rather significant.

I was wondering why the Census press release didn't mention this when talking about other milestones. Then I went into the Factfinder and found that, since they revise their previous years' statistics when they release new data, they now say Phoenix passed Philadelphia in 2015.

Rothman

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on May 26, 2017, 08:03:50 AM
Quote from: Rothman on May 26, 2017, 07:59:23 AM
Wait, was this the first time Phoenix surpassed Philadelphia?

No, in the last decade there was some conjecture estimates that Phoenix was at 1.7 million but it was WAY off.  If I had to speculate, I would venture the snowbird crowd probably had something to do with that assumption that the number was so high.
Philadelphia was bigger in the 2015 estimates.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

jwolfer

Quote from: inkyatari on May 26, 2017, 09:24:19 AM
Many people, myself included, think Chicago may become the next Detroit.

Only time will tell.
Chicago has a much more diverse economic base. Detroit "motor city" reliant heavily on the automobile industry.  And Chicago is the cultural capital of the Midwest.

Detroit, Cleveland, St Louis are all somewhat satellites of Chicago... Much like Southern cities are satellites of Atlanta.

It will take a long time and catastophy for Chicago to have a drastic downturn

LGMS428


pianocello

Carmel and Fishers, IN, have both surpassed 90K this year, and will probably pass South Bend within the next 10 years to become Indiana's 4th and 5th largest cities (Indy, Ft. Wayne, Evansville).

Gary had notoriously gone from the second largest city in Indiana to the second largest city in Lake County (Hammond) sometime before the last census, but they're both declining at roughly the same rate at this point. In fact, a quick search showed that Crown Point and Valparaiso are among the only growing cities in the NWI region.
Davenport, IA -> Valparaiso, IN -> Ames, IA -> Orlando, FL -> Gainesville, FL -> Evansville, IN

SP Cook

While these numbers are fun, and do have some meaning, because what a "city" is is do different from place to place, you can learn more about the economic health of different places by looking at the population of the entire metropolitan area.  Another good measure is Neilsen's TV DMA, which is the number of people that get TV from a particualr city's set of stations, which is more or less the cultural influence of a particular city.

Another measure I find useful is to look at the every 10 year House districts.  There are some gaps, due to gerrymanders, but more or less you can see how many CDs a particular city and its hinterland have over time, which will be a function (since the total since 1910, with a nitpick exception, is a constant) it clearly shows one area relative to another.  For example people always say Pittsburgh is not doing too bad, which is true, if you just look at the city.  But the number of people in the surrounding region over which Pittsburgh is the central focus, has colapsed.

As to Chicago, no, Detroit has always been a one-industry town and that one industry has plenty of wounds, both self-inflicted and otherwise.  Chicago is much more diverse.  I honestly do believe that Detroit will become a wasteland in the next 100 years.

Anyway in WV, Charleston and Huntington have been bleeding population for decades, as has the state as a whole, and have been near a tie.  Huntington is bleeding slightly slower recently and is only 1025 behind.  If you project it out, the two should be almost exactly tied by the next Census. 

Bruce

Fastest growing large cities, according to The Seattle Times:



Seattle finally broke the 700,000 barrier!

GaryV

Quote from: SP Cook on May 26, 2017, 02:26:24 PM

Another measure I find useful is to look at the every 10 year House districts.  There are some gaps, due to gerrymanders, but more or less you can see how many CDs a particular city and its hinterland have over time, which will be a function (since the total since 1910, with a nitpick exception, is a constant) it clearly shows one area relative to another.

Yet Detroit still has 2 Congressional Districts (although they extend beyond the city limits) even though Michigan has been losing districts for the last 2 or 3 cycles.  This is due to the Voting Rights Act.  They have to try their best to maintain the number of minority-majority districts.

With 14 districts and just shy of 10M residents, the "average" district population is 709k.  Detroit's population would easily fit into 1 district with enough left over to add in a small suburb or 2.

Roadgeekteen

I was reading this thinking, hey, will NYC ever be passed? Then I read the numbers more closely.
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

empirestate

Quote from: Henry on May 26, 2017, 09:34:08 AM
I still think it's funny that the largest city in the Bay Area is not San Francisco! When was the last time it was, 1989?

It still "feels" like it is; it's certainly the most urban location in the Bay Area, and far more like a Boston, Philadelphia or even NYC than San Jose is.

This gets me thinking: is there any way we could rank cities by how big they "feel"? Such a ranking would certainly place San Francisco in the top 5 nationally, and such cities as Boston, New Orleans and Wilmington, DE would move a good ways up the list from where population alone would place them.



iPhone

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: empirestate on May 26, 2017, 11:40:20 PM
Quote from: Henry on May 26, 2017, 09:34:08 AM
I still think it's funny that the largest city in the Bay Area is not San Francisco! When was the last time it was, 1989?

It still "feels" like it is; it's certainly the most urban location in the Bay Area, and far more like a Boston, Philadelphia or even NYC than San Jose is.

This gets me thinking: is there any way we could rank cities by how big they "feel"? Such a ranking would certainly place San Francisco in the top 5 nationally, and such cities as Boston, New Orleans and Wilmington, DE would move a good ways up the list from where population alone would place them.



iPhone

Population density?  San Francisco would only be second to NYC in that regard.

Roadgeekteen

Quote from: empirestate on May 26, 2017, 11:40:20 PM
Quote from: Henry on May 26, 2017, 09:34:08 AM
I still think it's funny that the largest city in the Bay Area is not San Francisco! When was the last time it was, 1989?

It still "feels" like it is; it's certainly the most urban location in the Bay Area, and far more like a Boston, Philadelphia or even NYC than San Jose is.

This gets me thinking: is there any way we could rank cities by how big they "feel"? Such a ranking would certainly place San Francisco in the top 5 nationally, and such cities as Boston, New Orleans and Wilmington, DE would move a good ways up the list from where population alone would place them.



iPhone
Way to opinion based.
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

empirestate

Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 27, 2017, 12:40:23 AM
Quote from: empirestate on May 26, 2017, 11:40:20 PM
Quote from: Henry on May 26, 2017, 09:34:08 AM
I still think it's funny that the largest city in the Bay Area is not San Francisco! When was the last time it was, 1989?

It still "feels" like it is; it's certainly the most urban location in the Bay Area, and far more like a Boston, Philadelphia or even NYC than San Jose is.

This gets me thinking: is there any way we could rank cities by how big they "feel"? Such a ranking would certainly place San Francisco in the top 5 nationally, and such cities as Boston, New Orleans and Wilmington, DE would move a good ways up the list from where population alone would place them.



iPhone
Way to opinion based.

Well, that's the whole point–could a system be devised to create this ranking in a way that isn't purely based on opinion?

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on May 26, 2017, 11:44:53 PM
Population density?  San Francisco would only be second to NYC in that regard.

That's surely part of the equation, but not all of it. I still think Chicago would rank ahead of San Francisco, whereas a lot of very tiny communities with high densities should not even place on the list. There are actually five municipalities more dense than NYC (and more than a dozen between it and SF, actually) in the U.S., but there's no question that NYC belongs on top.

briantroutman

There are a variety of "global city"  indices which use various objective criteria to determine the relative preeminence of cities.

The Globalization and World Cities Research Network numbers, for example, rank New York as the lone Alpha++ city in the U.S.–a rank it shares with only London internationally.

Chicago is in the company of Los Angeles as Alpha cities; Washington, San Francisco, and Miami are Alpha-. The various Beta ranks include such cities as Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Denver, and Minneapolis. Gammas include St. Louis, Phoenix, and Tampa.

These rankings are typically based in the economic self sufficiency of the city, but they probably correlate pretty well with how "big"  the city feels.

Desert Man

The 2014 population estimates of California's largest cities (in millions) - courtesy of Google search:
1. Los Angeles (3.977) - almost 4 mil could be 5 mil taken the account of second-home & uncounted residents.
2. San Diego (1.381) - slowed down. Neighboring city Tijuana, Baja Cal. Mexico has similar population.
3. San Jose (1.016) - surpassed a million, also slowed down, Northern Cal's largest city.
4. San Francisco (852,469) - city/county consolidation, has grown faster in the 2000s/10s.
5. Fresno (515, 486) - now larger than the state capital Sacramento, 6th place with 485,199.
7. Long Beach (473, 499) - still growing, but slower than in the mid 20th century period.
8. Oakland (413,755) - now called the New Brooklyn, black majority population (1990) declined to 20%.
9. Bakersfield (368,759) - the Dubai of America, due to oil economics, but not really a prosperous area.
10. Anaheim (346,997) - nearby Orange County seat Santa Ana, 11th place at 334,909.
12. Riverside (340.000) - in previously rapid-growth Inland Empire region in Southern Cal.
and 13. Stockton (320,000) - worst city in America (if you don't count Detroit on the list).

Riverside county's other largest cities are Moreno Valley at 210,000, Corona at 198,000, Temecula at 130,000 and Murrieta at 110,000. San Bernardino in its namesake county north of San Bernardino has 235,000 people, Fontana at 215,000 and Ontario at 168,000 (shrank, while Fontana booms and San Bernardino rebounds), and Rancho Cucamonga has 165,000. The rapid-growing Victorville area: Victorville and Hesperia each now have over 100,000 residents...and two non-incorporated towns Cabazon (Riv) and Landers (SB) are 1,000-2,500. 

Locally, my hometown Indio is the largest of the Palm Springs area: 97,000 - double of Palm Springs and Palm Desert, the 2nd largest is Cathedral City with 61,000 and Coachella south of Indio now has 43,000 residents. The towns of La Quinta have 43,000 as well, then Desert Hot Springs (the worst non-major city in America) is home to 25,000, and affluent gated communities of Rancho Mirage at 16,000 and tiny Indian Wells at 6,100. Way to the east in the Colorado River (Ca-Az state line) is Blythe, home to 25,000 residents and what a long drive on the I-10 it is.
Get your kicks...on Route 99! Like to turn 66 upside down. The other historic Main street of America.

empirestate

Quote from: briantroutman on May 27, 2017, 01:48:57 AM
There are a variety of "global city"  indices which use various objective criteria to determine the relative preeminence of cities. [...] These rankings are typically based in the economic self sufficiency of the city, but they probably correlate pretty well with how "big"  the city feels.

You're right, I've seen those before, and indeed they are probably the closest to what I'm thinking of. (Incidentally, Pittsburgh is another city that would rank well above its population class.) The trick is how to handle something like St. Louis or Detroit, cities which still have their "bigness" but have declined dramatically in population and probably also in their global ranking.

Quote from: Desert Man on May 27, 2017, 07:51:32 AM
The 2014 population estimates of California's largest cities (in millions) - courtesy of Google search:
1. Los Angeles (3.977) - almost 4 mil could be 5 mil taken the account of second-home & uncounted residents.

But of course, you don't count second homes; the whole idea of enumerating population is that each person is counted once.

Quote12. Riverside (340.000) - in previously rapid-growth Inland Empire region in Southern Cal.

Riverside, I observe, also has the benefit of huge areas of annexation in which an awful lot of new residents can fit. I have relatives living there, a good half-hour from the center of town, but still inside city limits.

Quoteand 13. Stockton (320,000) - worst city in America (if you don't count Detroit on the list).

...then Desert Hot Springs (the worst non-major city in America) is home to 25,000...

What's your basis for worst cities ranking?



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